The Content Tightrope (original) (raw)

Much as I might balk at the concept, I am a content creator; I write, I livestream, I am in the business of creating content. And over the years of doing this sort of thing, I’ve come to appreciate how challenging it is to balance the urge to make content with the desire to just play games.

And yes, I know this reads a whole lot like a first-world problem - and it largely is – but considering that this is what I’m doing with myself, it’s still a problem all the same and something I’ve had to think about a lot recently. And generally I think best when I write it out.

I realized that I was starting to teeter towards one direction over the other when it came time to put together my post for the regular stream of Final Fantasy XIV I do every Sunday. I sat in front of my piece of blank digital paper and pondered what I was thinking of doing for that day’s broadcast… and I came up with literally nothing.

I settled on effectively doing the usual activity of running roulettes, only with the angle of leveling up a tank class, and the stream was fun and fine, but in that moment I was sort of frozen. The prospect of not having any good ideas and then ultimately leaning on what seemed at the time like a crutch actually made me feel bad. Even though I was playing a game I really love. With people I really love.

It made me think about how often I’ve been playing City of Heroes without worrying about anyone watching or whether what I was doing was interesting to others. I was doing stuff purely for myself. And considering how often I kept returning to that well, it made me appreciate even more how vital that sort of experience is.

In this day and age of projecting every possible thought and plan, of trying to create a personal brand, of clawing for some sort of side hustle in order to make anything like a regular living wage, it’s easy for that to get lost, especially for creatives. There seems to be this pervasive sense that a hobby isn’t a hobby unless it’s creating product to be sold. My writing and streaming is really no different, honestly.

So I’m trying to better appreciate the ability to just enjoy the hobbies of gaming and writing for their form of self-enrichment and personal entertainment. Sure I’d like people to read this blog (and I’m going to post it on socials), but that’s more to just offer some thoughts and insight instead of hoping to “do numbers.” I’m going to continue to create stupid heroes and villains in an MMORPG because it challenges and frustrates but ultimately amuses me.

In the same vein, I do keep looking at games with an eye to whether they’ll be interesting to share in video or written format. But I’m also trying to do that because I like sharing my curiosities, my intrigues, and my enjoyments. And I’m going to do my level best when those enjoyments don’t really resonate with others – I spent a whole month writing about Craftopia and it was nice even though it ultimately felt like nobody cared. Big thanks to Bree for letting me do that, by the way.

I guess this also explains why I stopped personally blogging; I was wrestling with this idea that nobody cared or none of this made waves or I was creating an inferior product, so it fell off. That mindset needs to be corrected, and I’m doing what I can to slay that mental goblin. Though my recent silence was more due to illness than the goblins winning. This time.

I suppose ultimately I’m putting this all out there to just commiserate with others and say that I know the same thought processes. I’m also maybe writing this as a sort of mantra to myself. But ultimately it’s a topic that came to mind – a problem that I never remember having anytime before now, and it filled me with a morbid interest as well as a reason to write out how to address it.

These are very, very weird times.